Picture a pyramid. Not the fancy Las Vegas kind with neon lights, but the simple stone kind that’s been used as a symbol for centuries. Wide base, narrow top. That’s our society.

At the bottom, you have the majority of people — the poorest, the working class, the people who keep the wheels turning. They build the houses, drive the trucks, stock the shelves, care for the sick, and keep the lights on. The base is massive because most people live here. They might work full-time, maybe two jobs, but they’re still barely scraping by.

The higher you go, the fewer people there are. The middle class sits somewhere in between — teachers, small business owners, office workers. Comfortable but vulnerable. One bad accident or job loss could knock them down the pyramid.

At the very tip? The ultra-rich. Billionaires. CEOs of giant corporations. Hedge fund managers. The handful of people who could stop working today and still have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes. This is where the wealth piles up. And because the top is so small, it’s easy to forget just how much they hold.

Now, flip the pyramid upside down in your mind.

When you look at the economy — at wealth per person — the shape is reversed. The smallest part of society (the rich at the top of the social pyramid) holds the most money per capita. The base, which represents the vast majority, holds the least. If you measured wealth per person, the bottom is a drought, the middle is a trickle, and the top is a flood.

The richer you are, the more each person in your group owns. The poorer you are, the less there is to go around. This inverted pyramid of money creates pressure. The bottom supports everyone above it, but resources are sucked upward and concentrated into the hands of a few.

You’ve probably heard of “trickle-down economics.” It’s the idea that if you give the rich more — tax breaks, subsidies, incentives — they’ll invest it, create jobs, and the benefits will “trickle down” to everyone else. Sounds nice. In practice, it’s a fairy tale.

Here’s the reality: Money doesn’t trickle down. It trickles up.

When the wealthy get more, they don’t suddenly start spreading it around like confetti. They invest it in ways that make them even richer — in assets, stocks, real estate, and businesses that often exploit cheap labor. They might create jobs, sure, but those jobs often pay just enough to keep the workers alive, not enough to lift them up the pyramid.

Meanwhile, the people at the bottom spend nearly all their money just to survive — rent, food, transportation, medical bills. That money flows right back up to landlords, grocery chains, oil companies, and healthcare corporations. The cycle repeats: wealth concentrates at the top while the base strains under the weight.

It’s like pouring water onto the tip of an upside-down pyramid. Gravity does the rest. The water doesn’t stay at the top; it runs down the sides and gathers at the bottom. But in our economic pyramid, it’s reversed. The flow is engineered so that everything runs toward the top.

This isn’t about jealousy or hating success. It’s about balance. An economy where money only flows one way eventually collapses under its own weight. The base cracks. The middle erodes. And when that happens, the tip has nothing left to stand on.

If we want a stable society, the pyramid needs to be more balanced. That means fair wages, strong public services, progressive taxes, and closing the loopholes that let billions slip through without touching the rest of us.

Because right now, the richest are climbing higher, the poorest are sinking lower, and the pyramid we all live under is becoming unstable.